


"And I Wrap Time in You"

by jer832, Kelkat9, scifiangel, yumimum



Series: Let Me Count the Ways [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: "Let Me Count the Ways", Alien Character(s), Crack, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Introspection, Missing Scene, Romance, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:11:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2201529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kelkat9/pseuds/Kelkat9, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifiangel/pseuds/scifiangel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yumimum/pseuds/yumimum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Russell T. Davies' "Aliens of London" and "World War 3" provide the architecture for this story.  Here are the "missing" shagging scenes. Here too is the beginning of serious justifications and fixes for the inexplicable, uncharacteristic, incongruous, and overall annoying plotting and dialog that throws off the so much of the logic and consistency of s1 from this point. (Except the pig; just assume the Slitheen were smart enough to realize Earthers were dumb enough.)  Yes, I'm high-fiving my co-writers and myself. We are very proud of what we've created.</p>
<p>To give credit – and thanks – where such is eminently due: <b>Yumimum</b> wrote a huge part of the phone sex; <b>Scifiangel</b> made all the sexy shagging manips (here as well as throughout the LMCTW series); <b>Kelkat9</b> contributed Rose's future girlfriend and their phone conversations. (This character figures prominently throughout the episodes. Go to Teaspoon, read on through the series; do not drink or eat at your computer while doing so.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	"And I Wrap Time in You"

**Author's Note:**

> The entire "Let Me Count the Ways" _adult_ series 1, in which the Doctor and Rose are lovers, is on [TEASPOON](http://www.whofic.com/viewuser.php?uid=20997) authored by **LMCTW**. The stories are penned (keyboarded?) by yumimum, scifiangel, kelkat9, jer832, and fogsblue. My contributions to the series are also posted here in AO3.  
>     
> LMCTW originally posted AoL/ww3 as a three-part arc on Teaspoon. They are together here, in one complete story. This story, like the others, is titled and subtitled in keeping with the Nine/Rose romance that drives the ficathon series.  
>    
>  _For permission to use the manips please contact our artist at scifiangel.livejournal.com_

 

 

  

 

 

 

" **And I Wrap Time in You"**

by

jer832, yumimum, scifiangel, and kelkat9

(based on the AoL and ww3 teleplays by Russell T. Davies)

 

 

 

  **(FINDING TIME)**

  

The Doctor struggled ineffectively. Despite his body's respiratory bypass ability he couldn't stop gasping for air as he cried out Rose's name again and again, and then a string of Gallifreyan oaths. He had been stuffed into the crotch of one of the coral struts in the TARDIS control room— That is to say his bum and feet were stuffed into the constrictive space along with his long long legs, which had been folded at the knees and crammed in on either side. The rest of him hung out backwards, his head barely clearing the metal floor. All of him was quite naked. He thrashed and writhed against the raw coral, his hands frantically searching for leverage as he fought to keep his head from slamming into the massive base of the strut or grazing the cold hard flooring. His tenuous mental control broke, overcome by the surge of blood through his body into his raging hard-on, and the fantastic torture of Rose's teeth and tongue scraping up and down his cock.

Rose jerked the Doctor's thighs further apart, knocking his knees painfully against the raw coral. Before he could think to complain, she wrapped a fist around his shaft, squeezed him firmly as she enclosed the head of his erection in her hot, tight little mouth and sucked him with a suction that made the Doctor shriek and buck and thank the cosmos he'd asked twice. As she Dysoned his painfully engorged yet thoroughly game member, Rose's tongue and teeth did things the Doctor was certain that no breathing male in the universe with the requisite equipment could resist… especially when one little hand squeezed his balls, a knuckle pressed into his perineum, and something that might have been two determined fingers (or might not; at that moment the Doctor wasn't really in any physical position or cerebral state to analyse) pushed into him somewhere she'd never pushed into him before. He came harder than he ever had before in her mouth— he came and he kept coming as Rose's mouth and tongue and lips and hands and fingers milked him…and milked him… and very nearly succeeded in driving him into one of the TARDIS's alternate dimensions.

When Rose finally let him come down, as it were, and helped him up (the whole of him, not just that one specific, thoroughly blown-out part of him) the Doctor was barely able to stand let alone think. His circulatory system finally sent enough blood into his cortex that he could stumble to the controls. He was dizzy with vertigo, dizzy with Rose Tyler, with sated carnal hunger, and with a love he was terrified would never be sated. Therefore the probability of his landing the TARDIS where he had intended was lower than usual. So he considered what happened next to be Rose Tyler's fault.

Completely.

 

  **~~**

 

"How long have I been gone?" Rose asked.

"Umm, about, uh twelve yeah twelve hours," the Doctor replied, still trying to get his impressive brain to do more than count the ways he was going to make Rose Tyler pay after she got back to the TARDIS. "What're you going to tell her?"

"I don't know! I've been to the year 5 billion… and only been gone, what, twelve hours?"

The Doctor pulled Rose close, wrapped his arms around her hips, and stuck his tongue down her throat–a neat alien trick accomplished only because his respiratory bypass system was bypassing the lingering effects of Rose's blow job. She writhed in his arms and against his zippered-up fly, which suddenly seemed unnecessarily constricting, then pulled back and grinned at him, her tongue just peeking out the side of her mouth. The Doctor 's breath hitched and he smiled wanly. That woman _knew_ what she did to him, what she was doing now.

"I'll tell her I've spent the night at Shareen's. See you later! Oh–don't you disappear."

Rose ground against him again, just to make sure he got the message. He got it, and the TARDIS didn't even have to translate. Since Time Lords didn't believe in post-coital ciggies, he still wasn't thinking straight when he let Rose run out the TARDIS doors without checking the date. His brain didn't completely engage until he staggered out for a breath of air and saw the "Where is Rose?" bills posted everywhere he looked.

 

**~~**

 

The policeman was nicer about it all than Jackie Tyler; at least he didn't threaten to…Well, there were things that Rose had threatened and some she'd actually done to him; but as far as kitchen appliances went, while Rose leaned to OXO Goodgrips and Dustbusters (and quite creatively, it might be added) Jackie apparently favoured eight-inch cleavers and electric carving knives.

"Rose, why won't you just tell me where you've been?" Jackie asked, a perfectly reasonable question for a mum to ask the daughter who had disappeared for a year without a note and never a bloody call to say she was alive and fine Mum please don't be having daily heart attacks.

Rose looked at the Doctor with more pain in her eyes than he'd seen when the Gelth came after them. Time to be a hero again! "Actually it's my fault. I sort of, er, employed Rose as a companion."

Rose groaned. _Stupid alien twonk._

The policeman suddenly looked as if he was beginning to agree with Jackie on how to handle the situation. "When you say _companion_ ," he asked, darting a glance to the kitchen and its collection of cutlery, "is this a sexual relationship?"

"No!" Rose said quickly.

"No!" the Doctor said, giving the policeman a taste of his oncoming storm glare.

"Then what is it?" Jackie Tyler growled, advancing on the Time Lord, who was looking less and less oncoming stormy as Rose's mum approached. "Because you, you waltz in here all charms and smiles, and the next thing I know, she vanishes off the face of the Earth! How old are you then? Forty? Forty-five? What, you find her on the Internet? Did you go online and pretend you're a Doctor?"

"I _AM_ a Doctor!"

"Prove it! Stitch _THIS_ , mate!" Jackie hauled off and slapped the Doctor so hard that he… Suffice it to say that if Jackie Tyler had been a Time Lady in control of time and space, the Doctor would have suddenly found himself in Sydney a good fortnight later.

 

**~~**

 

The Doctor and Rose regrouped on the roof. They hid out, they did; they hid from Rose's mum. There might have been a bit of cowering as well.

"Nine hundred years of time and space, and I've never been slapped by someone's mother."

"Your face!"

"It hurt!" He cradled his poor bruised cheek.

"Poor baby," Rose laughed. "Wait, when you said nine hundred years…"

"That's my age, Rose." The Doctor bit his lip and shrugged and looked away.

Rose turned him back to face her, took his hand down from his assaulted cheek and gently replaced it with hers. He looked into Rose's eyes–eyes bright with mirth and affection, eyes he could drown in… always did when she looked at him like that. His lips found hers and they kissed softly. Her arms went around him, inside his jumper, and her nails teased his skin. His hands settled, one under her skirt on her tight little bum and one in her hair, and he drew her into his lap, deepening the kiss. His cool fingers played over the satin-smooth warmth of Rose's thigh, tickling and caressing. She sighed when he reached her mound and whimpered as his thumb strummed her clit. Coaxing two fingers just inside, he found Rose already wet for him, so he pushed them into her. She moaned softly. With a little smile and a teasing nip at Rose's full lower lip, he impaled her fully. She gasped and ground down against his knuckles, writhing in his lap and on his hand. He set a slow firm rhythm of pleasure, and soon Rose was sobbing his name into the hollow of his throat, searing it into his skin with her tongue and teeth, her fingers digging into his flesh with most exquisite force. Her body juddered suddenly, and he felt it throughout his. As she trembled and quaked and choked out his name and her need, Rose's hands began to work frantically at his fly. The Doctor had a fleeting thought of Jamie McCrimmon, found a strong new appreciation for kilts.

 

**~~**

 

"So. Nine hundred? Really?"

"Yeah."

"Mum was right. That is one hell of an age gap." Rose jumped off the wall and paced the roof, wondering what to do about her mum, how to stay with the Doctor, how to convince her mum she wasn't the sex slave Jackie obviously thought she was. That thought made her smile. Then it made her wet, which was a real danger now that she'd taken to wearing skirts–dripping on the sofa wouldn't help her case any, not to mention the Doctor's poor face, if Jackie found a stain.

If only she could just tell her mum! "Every conversation with you just goes mental. There's no one else I can talk to. I've seen all that stuff up there, the size of it, and I can't say a word. Aliens and spaceships and things, and I'm the only person on planet Earth who knows they exist!"

It was about then that the space ship buzzed them, veered through London, took a huge chunk out of Big Ben, and crashed into the Thames.

"Oh, that's just not fair!" Rose whinged. The Doctor grinned.

 

**~~**

 

Rose conned the Doctor back into the belly of the beast with the allure of watching history being made on their big screen telly and a promise to keep the beast (and her mean right hook) in another room far from his face. Rose made good on her promise, but only because Jackie had decided Rose needed a good guilt trip, leaving him on his own in front of their old telly fighting for possession of the remote.

 

_"...The military are on the lookout for more spaceships…"_

_"I've got no choice, Rose! Either I make him welcome, or I run the risk of never seeing you again!"_

_"…. It's unconfirmed, but I'm being told a body has been found in the wreckage–a body of non-terrestrial origins. It's being brought ashore…"_

_"What could be so bad that you couldn't call me even once? I'm your mum, sweetie; you can tell me anything!"_

_"….Then ice the cake any colour you want. Here's one I made a little bit earlier. Look at that: your very own spaceship, ready to eat. And there's something extra special inside: it's a little green marzipan alien with maraschino cherry bugging eyes on four orange peel stalks!"_

 

With a disgusted look, the Doctor got up and left Jackie's. Rose followed quickly. "You didn't like the UFO cake? Maybe we can do one blue and boxy." She grinned. The Doctor made a rude sound and started to walk away. Rose grabbed his arm. "And where do you think you're going?"

"Nowhere! It's just a bit human in there for me. History just happened and they're talking about where you can buy dodgy top up cards for half price. I'm off on a wander, that's all."

"Right! There's a spaceship on the Thames and you're just _wandering_."

"You don't need me. Go and celebrate history. Spend some time with your mum." The Doctor planted a quick kiss on the top of Rose's head, turned, and started off again.

"Promise you won't disappear?" Rose knew she sounded needy, but the Doctor had a flight risk look about him and a TARDIS in the yard. He wouldn't look her in the eye… and there was that slap he still was whinging about. He stopped walking, turned, and looked at her, his eyes making an unhurried, measured circuit down her body and back. By the time his eyes met hers, she was out of breath and flushed.

The Doctor walked back to Rose with a slow, simmering smile. He slid a hand into the front pocket of her denims. It took a bit of effort and some manipulation because the trousers were rather nicely fitted. "You changed into denims, Rose Tyler," he accused. Inside the pocket, his fingers crept to her groin, kneaded her, burrowed into her cleft, rubbing the rough denim material between them over her clit. Rose's head began to swim. "Mum said–" she stammered.

"But _I_ said–"

"W..what?"

With a quick look in all directions, the Doctor pulled Rose along the balcony, away from Jackie's door and any windows. He popped her denims open as he spun her around, her back to his front. His body pressed hers against the railing. "Only skirts or dresses, preferably short, and absolutely no…. Ah." He grinned. His Rose was knickerless. He pushed Rose's denims down her thighs.

"And always be ready for something exciting and dangerous to hit." Rose finished breathily, though she'd left out a few intervening sentences.

"Good girl!" He slapped her naked bum cheek lightly but didn't move his hand away. He stroked and petted Rose's bum, let his fingers wander between her thighs, through her folds, graze the erect bundle of nerves that seemed always eager for him. As he teased her, he unzipped his own denims and released his erection. Catching an arm around her waist, he lifted her, tipping her precariously over the railing, and drove his cock into her center.

"Oi," Rose exclaimed, "the zip is cold! Next time wear sweats."

"You want me in front of your mum's, holding you over the railing like this, your naked bum in the air, and a heap of untailored cuffed jersey and elastic around my ankles?" He grunted, adjusting himself inside her. "You want me to take some Jackie Tyler buckshot in my arse?"

He balanced Rose against the railing, his arm around her waist keeping her safe as he began to move. His free hand worked its way under Rose's tank top and he fondled a breast, pinching and scraping and teasing the nipple. Getting a firm grip on the railing, Rose rocked against him. Rose's encouraging cries of more, harder, more mixed with the Doctor's grunts of exertion and pleasure as he slammed into her. Rose's rhythm grew erratic. With a long almost bruising pinch of her nipple, the Doctor sank his teeth into the soft muscle of her shoulder and made one final hard lunge into her center. She exploded with a cry, pulling him after her.

The Doctor lowered Rose to the walk, kissed the top of her head, and put them both back together. "Tell you what - TARDIS key. About time you had one." He grinned and dropped the key into the palm of her hand. "See you later!"

 

**~~**

 

Rose knew the relationship between her mum and the Doctor was going to be strained. But this was like one of them bad old science fiction movies on the telly. She steeled herself and entered the TARDIS.

"Alright, so I lied," the Doctor said. He believed a _strong_ opening move was always best. "I went and had a look, but the whole crash landing's a fake. I thought so–it's just too perfect. I mean, hitting Big Ben–come on!" He rushed down to Rose, grabbed her up and tried to kiss the frown off her face. Believing a strong _opening move_ was always even better, he also undid Rose's denims and rammed a hand inside, aiming for that spot that would jumpstart her motor. "So I thought let's go and have a look–"

"My mum's here," Rose whispered.

The Doctor pulled his hand out of Rose as the TARDIS doors began to creak open, and she barely got herself zipped before Jackie and Mickey entered. He whispered to her sternly. "Skirts. No mothers. No ex-boyfriends. And no exceptions!" Turning quickly he ran back to the controls before Rose could see the storm clouds crossing his face. He loved Rose with his entire being, body and soul, and was planning to tell her as soon as he found the right moment, but the Doctor was beginning to fret over Rose making _his_ TARDIS domestic.

The Doctor should have fretted about the mum who was devoted to her beloved only child, often prone to hysterics, very good at retribution… and at that very moment standing just inside the TARDIS, eyes and mouth wide and getting wider as she gaped around her, totally freaking out…

_….My baby… My poor Rose… kidnapped… by this, this… **alien**!... brainwashed and made to live a year as his **sex slave** … my poor little baby girl…so alone and scared and helpless without her mum… experimented on… probed and **violated** with his **disgusting alien–** ohgodohgodohgod!_ ––

No, Jackie couldn't even think it!

 

**~~**

 

_"I've seen one!" Jackie screamed into the telephone, to the people the telly told her to call, "I really have–an alien. And she's with him! My daughter–she's with him. And she's not safe. Oh, my God... she's not safe! I've seen an alien. And I know his  
name–he's called 'The Doctor'._

Computers in a top secret facilities went a bit crazy with beeps and blips and other strange noises, and their screens blinked _the Doctor_. The head of the UNIT squad stationed at 10 Downing shook his head, chuckled, and mumbled something to his aide about the Doctor and a pain the Brig probably was feeling in his buttocks at that moment. The emergency protocols that the Slitheen had stolen lay open, quite coincidentally, to the page that described a detailed but outdated way to reach an alien expert named _the Doctor_.

 

**~~**

  

"You think you're so impressive," Rose said, trying not to look too impressed by the limo they were in.

"I am impressive."

"Where to?" she asked.

"Where d'you think? Rose Tyler, I'm gonna take you in 10 Downing Street."

"Oh my God! I'm going to 10 Downing Street?"

"Yeah."

The Doctor rapped on the glass that cut them off from the front seat, waved at the driver and made a little gesture. The glass darkened. The Doctor smiled and relaxed back into the plush leather seat, stretching his long legs in the ample space. He loved constantly having to remind Rose just how impressive he was; sometimes he thought she might be challenging him on it all the time on purpose.

He pulled Rose to him, unbuttoning and unzipping them both as he did. Mumbling something about skirt rules, he pulled one leg of her tight denims clean off, pulled her legs apart, and set her astride him. "See, here's th' plan, Rose Tyler: first you're _goin'_ to 10 Downing," he said as he gently worked his freed hard-on into her, "and THEN you'll be _comin'_ there." He slid out, used the head of his penis to tease Rose's clitoris, then eased her down his length again. Their groins ground together, and they both gasped as he made several short quick drives into her, tormenting that spot of hers in a fast jerking barrage. Grasping her hips, he began to move her up and down his length in earnest. He made Rose ride him fast and hard, and he didn't stop when she fell forward. Digging her fingers into the supple leather seat back, Rose moaned and mewed breathlessly against his throat. "I'm gonna make you come crying my name in every room of that house, Rose Tyler." He stopped moving, raised Rose's chin to kiss her. "An' guess how many rooms there are!"

 

**~~**

 

The Doctor's plan to take Rose around 10 Downing was put on hold (or not, depending on how one looks at that idiom) while he went off to save the world again. Harriet Jones MT, Flydale North seemed like a nice, responsible woman, if a bit twitchy, not a bad choice to look after his jeopardy-friendly lover.

"They turned the body into a suit! A disguise for the thing inside!" Harriet started to cry. "Oh, you must think me mental!"

Rose shook her head vigorously. "It's alright! I believe you. It's... it's alien. They must have some _serious_ technology behind this... if we could find it, we could use it, and it would give the Doctor an idea what he's up against. C'mon Harriet; help me look for some Spock."

As Harriet Jones looked on, a bit stupefied at the idea that combing a room for some Spock could be as routine as looking for a misplaced shoe, she searched for something that could help the Doctor stop the invasion. Rose felt in control, capable, important, and just a bit impressive herself, just like the Doctor was rubbing off on her–no, no, bad Rose, mind out of the gutter! There wasn't time for the images that conjured up and the damp need they aroused. There was an invasion to stop… a world to save… a Time Lord to shag… a Prime Minister skin suit in the cabinet room… a sudden burning fear for the safety of UNIT's impressive alien specialist…a need to get to the Doctor, to make sure he was alive…a man strangled before her eyes by the evil murdering alien who was now coming for Harriet and her…

….While in the conference room, surrounded by the bodies of the murdered human scientists, the Doctor was on his knees before the Slitheen, his body shaking with pain… his hearts reeling with terror that his Rose might already be one of their victims…

 

**~~**

 

 

 

 

**(MAKING TIME)**

 

 {a/n: The dialog in brackets, quoted by Harriet, is from _'A Flea in Her Ear'_ by Georges Feydeau.}

 

 

So many things about the Doctor's life hadn't much changed from before he'd been summoned to Gallifrey to fight a war that couldn't be won, saved the universe and lost his people, his planet, his sanity, his… _(what was he doing, taking inventory?!)_ … and his eighth body, then dragged himself back to the only place besides the TARDIS that had ever felt like a real home. He still wasn't sure how much of the ensuing events that had almost made his ninth body his last was a case of _Be careful what you wish for_ (and as usual he refused to dwell on one little character quirk when there were so many big ones to occupy his impressive brain); but instead of going out with a bang or swallow diving into a pool of plastic, he ended up saving and being saved by Rose Tyler and falling head over rock-hard tip for the human woman the moment their hands met and their fingers entwined– ok that last bit was definitely something very different than… well, ever before. But as for the rest, not so much.

For example.

An alien ship had crashed to Earth (London of course, slicing through Big Ben and nose-diving into the Thames in a suspiciously high-budget BBC-movie kind of way), its occupant a porcine alien that wasn't alien at all. All of Earth's scientific experts on aliens had been assembled in 10 Downing then electrocuted through their I.D. tags by the real aliens, who planned (still no surprise) to destroy the planet. The Doctor himself (rudely interrupted in the middle of a typically brilliant speech that would have segued into his saving the Earth from said homicidal aliens) was driven down onto his knees, his body wracked with agony from the invaders' deadly high voltage weapon.

Somehow he managed to rip off the fake I.D. tag and stagger to his feet. Perhaps it was because his non-human physiology could stand up to that kind of abuse. Or because he was the Doctor and the Doctor was too pigheaded to die. Perhaps his desperate need to get to Rose Tyler gave him strength and stoked his determination. Most likely it was a bit of all three, juiced by the alien weapon's unexpected secondary effect on his Gallifreyan anatomy as the current flowed through the pleasure centers of his brain. He plunged the I.D. tag into the chest of the alien gloating before him; electricity flowed into the alien's body and through its familial link into every Slitheen on the planet.

Desperate to find Rose, the Doctor staggered out of the conference room, stopping only to confirm that the scientists were beyond help. He pulled out a mobile phone that he'd jiggery-poked to give him unlimited range and keyed to the one bio-signature that had come to matter most to him throughout all of space and time. The connection didn't go through. With a curse, he ran.

 

**~~**

 

The alien that had trapped Rose Tyler and Harriet Jones in the Cabinet room, already killed a brave young man and was about to kill them, howled in agony as electricity jolted through its familial link and arcked over its body. Rose grabbed Harriet's hand, pulled her around the writhing Slitheen, and dragged her out of the room. Rose's only thought was to get to the Doctor. He had to be alive... he _HAD_ to!

Rose and Harriet raced through the seemingly endless halls and connecting rooms of Number 10. They knew what would happen if they slowed down… if they were sighted by that huge green alien that murdered the PM and the young man... if it caught them. It wasn't a pretty thought. It wouldn't be a pretty ending.

"Harriet, we have to get to the Doctor! Which way d'we go now?"

"Take that door up ahead, Rose–it leads to the servants' corridor, and we can get back to the main stairway."

Rose chanced a look back. "That green fartin' alien is right behind us, Harriet!"

"Detour," Harriet sang out and yanked Rose through a door on their left.

 

**~~**

 

"Rose, over there," Harriet huffed, too exhausted to gesture. "That…that's… main stairway is beyond… the next set o… of... rooms. The Doctor… he… should…be… just … " Harriet choked and stopped running. Swaying dangerously, she grabbed at the wall to keep from falling over. "Oh Rose, I… need to… catch my… breath!"

"No, no.... we can't stop! It'll catch us and kill us, and zip our skin off!" Rose grabbed Harriet's hand, pulled her up, and dragged her along. "We gotta keep goin'... Harriet, keep goin'!"

Rose's mobile rang.

"Doctor!"

Rose didn’t hear the Doctor but instead the sound of pulsing music, something that sounded like the Girl From Ipanema. “Hello?” she asked, frowning at her mobile.

“Rose Ty-ler,” a guttural voice called out.

“Who is this?”

There was a pause and some cursing about temporal differentials and inefficient human technology. “A friend,” the guttural voice finally responded, sounding coldly mechanical, or maybe just unfamiliar with English.

“Sorry, but I don’t know who you are and I’m in a bit of pinch at the mo and really need to ring up my uh friend so if you don’t mind…”

“The –Doc-tor.”

“Yeah, wait, who are you again?”

“A friend from your future. Rose Tyler will identify her location and temporal co-ordinates.”

“Oh my god, you’re from my future! Uh, should we be talkin? I mean the Doctor’s always goin’ on ‘bout not muckin’ up the time line.”

More cursing crossed the phone only this time about Time Lord pricks. That made Rose smile a bit. Whoever this was definitely knew the Doctor. Finally, her new friend continued. “Rose Tyler must identify her location and time.”

“Well, all right, um I’m at 10 Downing and it’s 6 March, 2006.”

There was another pause. “Rose Tyler will persevere! Slitheen are inferior!”

Rose smiled. “Yeah, well not so sure ‘bout that,” she confided as she heard banging, crashing and splintering of doors nearby. “They're a bit big and strong and…” she paused wrinkling her nose. “Smelly.”

“Rose Tyler is sup-erior! She can out-wit them and show the male prick to respect her and listen to her fee-lings!”

Rose bit her lip. “Um I dunno ‘bout that,” she murmured into her mobile, toeing her trainer into the floor whilst Harriet leaned against the wall a while catching her breath and looking concerned.

“Rose, we should really consider making our exit post haste, I believe.”

“Just a mo, Harriet,” she said and focused on her new friend on her mobile.

“Look, thanks for the tip but I have to dash. I’m sort of bein’ hunted.”

“Do not fear, Rose Ty-ler! All will proceed as it must. The male prick will learn! You will dom-i-nate, force him to obey! All male pricks who do not obey will be exterminated!”

Rose giggled. She didn’t know about the obey part…well unless she had him by his… Mmm, now there was a thought.

“Rose Ty-ler, remember! Trust your feelings, do not let any pricks hurt you and free your inner goddess to destroy all unfeeling male pricks! Dominate! Dominate!”

“Yeah, well uh, I have to run,” Rose said slowly wondering about this friend from the future. “Um thanks but you never told me who you were?”

“A friend. Go Rose Tyler. All is as it should be.”

Rose rang off and stared at her mobile as it immediately rang again.

“Doctor?”

On the other end of the connection, the Time Lord dared to take a nano-second just to rejoice at the sound of his lover's voice, then, "Rose! Where are you? I've been trying to call you!"

"Hmmm, must've accidentally disabled call-waiting."

"Call _waiting_?"

"Doctor, I was so scared for you! The aliens are using human skin to disguise themselves. Are you alright?"

"Yes, Rose. Are you?"

"Yeah, but Harriet and I have a big green fartin' alien on our tail."

"Rose, don't let it catch you, it's a killer!"

"You _think_?! Doctor, don't you ever meet any other kind of aliens?"

"Not NOW, Rose! Where are you?"

"I don't know! We've been tryin' to get to the main stairway or the elevator to get to you."

"How far behind you is it?"

"Not far enough!"

The Doctor heard a sharp loud _crack_ that sounded too much like a body being snapped in two. His hearts leapt into his throat. "Rose! What was that noise?"

"Us slammin' closed a door between two rooms."

He heard another sickening snap—sharp, loud, immediate... "What's that, Rose?"

"The alien slammin' it open!"

"Rose—" Harriet choked out, "—tell the Doctor… we are just about at the… main stairway on… the floor above the meeting room."

"I heard that, Rose. Don't go there; it's not safe. I'm on my way. Find somewhere to hide until—Rose, _that_ noise–and _that_ one! ... More doors?"

"Yeah."

"I don't remember there being so many doors up there."

"Doctor, there's nothing BUT doors up here. Doors into rooms, doors into halls, doors between rooms… and Harriet and me gettin' chased through just about every one of 'em!"

"Find a room with only one door, lock it, and hide. Then ring me and tell me where you are." He heard another crash, this one somewhat muffled. "Is that—?"

"Another door, yeah. I hip-checked it open. It looks like some kind of VIP suite. Harriet will keep watch; I'm checkin' it out. Maybe it's... hmm... eh?... "

"Rose?"

"Nope... bad room, _BAD ROOM_! Too many bleedin' doors!"

The Doctor chuckled. "Blimey, Rose, someone would think you two landed yourselves in the middle of a French bedroom farce! I know you like your pretty boys, but the blokes who come after you are supposed to stop stripping when they get down to skin."

"That's not funny."

"Actually, Rose," Hariet huffed breathlessly at Rose's shoulder, "depending on who authored it, it could be very funny indeed."

"I heard that, Rose, tell Harriet I like her!"

"Rose, tell the Doctor I like him too!" Harriet had always believed that armed with intelligence, facts, a facile attitude, and the wisdom she'd found within a fine and enduring piece of literature, one could face any situation admirably; this situation definitely called for farce. With a flourish she gestured to a room she felt sure would do for Rose and her, and told the young woman, _"Hurry up, out this way. Take the door on the right and you are in the hall. You say the Doctor called?"_

Harriet's voice (perhaps a bit too _Old Vic_ for an MP of Flydale North in such dire circumstance) projected nicely and could be heard by the party on the other end of Rose's phone connection. The Doctor chuckled. Then he laughed deeply, drunk on a cocktail of emotion. Seriously relieved and thankful that Rose was alright, he was also almost giddy with delight. Here he was in the middle of a fantastically perilous situation again with the clever, totally fantastic, and hot as a nova Ms. Tyler at his side again (well, more accurately, someplace she shouldn't have gotten into in the first place, again.) He felt a primitive and driving need to get to his lover, to keep her safe. He could not deny (nor would he) the urge—also primitive and driving (and somewhat physically uncomfortable)—to take Rose fast and hard and repeatedly against the nearest clean surface as soon as their clean-up task was complete. An MP quoting Feydeau added that extra bit of insanity that made it all make sense. With a grin he told Rose to hold the mobile out and answered Harriet Jones with the farce's strangely appropriate dialog. _"Good! "Excellent! Go in my dear fellow."_

Harriet gave Rose Tyler a curious, searching look then quoted Raymonde's reply, _"Camille's been waiting for you as if you were the Second Coming."_

"Bloody hell, you two!" Rose rolled her eyes at Harriet's rather self-satisfied expression and stuck her tongue out at the mobile even though the Doctor couldn't see it of course. He also couldn't see that Harriet had left her blushing furiously.

Rose and Harriet rushed into the empty room through its single door. Something in Rose's brain snarked, 'Only one door means only one way out, and you know what it's like with the Doctor: there's always somethin' waitin' on the other side of a door!' Rose tried to ignore the flippin' know-it-all Voice of Doom, though personally she was inclined to agree with it. Harriet ran to hide behind a gaudy divan. Rose rushed over to the thick long drapes covering a wall of windows, slipped behind them, and flattened herself against the wall. She pulled out her mobile, thumbing the Doctor's pre-programmed number. They were connected before her mobile reached her ear.

"Doctor."

"Yes, Rose."

"We're upstairs, past the elevator, in a stateroom with just one door, and we got bloody Act 2 of your soddin' French flippin' farce! There's doors slammin' everywhere, I'm hidin' behind a big window curtain, Harriet's hidin' between a Japanese silk screen and a sofa uglier than Mum's–and now that she's got her breath back, she's been quoting Feydeau nonstop." Rose held the mobile out toward the MP.

"What, Doctor? I can't...." She brought the phone back to her ear. "What? Doctor, are you...?" Rose moved her mobile away from her ear again, just long enough to stick her tongue out at it. "Go on, laugh. Stupid alien wanker."

"Oi, Rose Tyler," he huffed, "I'm not stupid! And at least I don't strip my human skin off."

"It doesn't take much to get you out of everythin' else," Rose reminded him, her voice tipping into a sultry gruffness that made the Doctor's breath hitch.

Silence.

Except for Harriet in the background, being quietly theatrical. _{"I'm ready to commit a folly. Will you help me?"}_

Then...

"Rose, I can hear Harriet clearly. Can she hear you?"

"Nah, your secret is safe with me."

"And you, Rose? Are you safe, love?"

The emotion in the Doctor's voice made Rose's heart jump. She stroked her mobile lovingly, the homicidal green alien momentarily forgotten, or at least driven to the back burner of her psyche, in the flood of feelings for her lover. "Safe and missing being with you," she whispered into her mobile, her voice husky and low.

_{"He'll be stimulated—_ " the MP for Flydale North continued, finding French farce more appealing at the moment than the thought of becoming science fiction road kill, " _—beyond endurance."}_

Rose blushed again. She heard the Doctor choke and try to disguise it as a sneeze. "Doctor," she grinned, "I guess you're missin' me too."

The MP for Flydale North carried on with the scene: _{"Marvellous! Marvellous! I tell you, you've got a talent for this sort of thing."}_

"Yeah, Rose Tyler, you do," the Doctor said huskily.

Rose giggled. "Don't remember stuffy old plays being this interesting in school." She double-checked that Harriet was still a ways off. "Doctor, it IS a bloody farce if any frog thinks he stands a chance against a Council Estate girl in Number 10, and I don't care how much he farts."

_{"Oh, Raymonde! Raymonde! You are all I dream of!"}_

"That's my Rose! I'm on my way to get you; stay put."

_{"Not now, thank you very much."}_

"Stay put? Really? But there's not much doin' here; I figured, y'know, maybe I'd take a walk, look for a tour group, find someone to talk to while I'm waitin' for you to stop muckin' about and show up. Y'know, somethin' to cut the boredom."

_{"That sort of thing is perfectly alright when you've got nothing else on your mind."}_

"Hmm. Right. Rose - - - - "

"What? Doctor, I can't understand you….wha? Oi, stop laughin', you! Whadya-say?"

"I said..." The Doctor 's mouth came scant millimetres from his mobile, and he whispered in that smoldering, slow as molasses and black as sin Northern drawl this regeneration was so good at, the one that never failed to make his lover moan for him. "…Rose, what are you wearing?"

"Doctor, did a green alien hit you on the head?"

"No, I'm fine. I just figured... well, it seemed to be in keeping with all the running and door slamming, and the little detour Harriet's brain took, and you with nothing to do, and all. So, what are you w– "

"You know bloody well what I'm wearing, Doctor!! You took it off of me in the limo on th'way over!!"

"Shhh!!!! Rose… " The Doctor's voice quieted as much as Rose's had risen. "Murdering aliens…MP Flydale North in the room. Keep your voice down. What. Are. You. Wearing?"

Rose spoke softly. "I'm wearin' my new denims, the pink t-shirt with the flowers, and the jacket you fixed so's blood rinses out, and if we're really gonna do this, then do it right and stop laughin'."

"So–denims, top, jacket… No knickers."

"No knickers, no bra."

"N-no…? What happened to your bra, Rose?"

"What d'you think? Oi! Stop laughin'!"

"Then you stop laughing too, _mon amour_." The Doctor stroked the screen of his mobile, imagining the look of laughing brown eyes, smooth creamy skin, and a peekaboo-tongued smile. "Are you sure you're safe, Rose?"

"Safer than you'll be if Mum sees that bra on the news tomorrow. She was with me when I bought it."

"Uhhhnn..."

Rose smiled. He was the most impressive being in the cosmos, maybe even the most important and most powerful, and he cowered at the thought of her mum and blimey how she loved him! "Yeah, Doctor; we're safe for now. We jumped in here after the alien checked it out… What? I can't hear you, Doctor, with all the doors being slammed and the swearin' and Harriet's switched to the _"Dead Parrot_ " and she's doin' the different voices... and you laughin' your head off like that, you better come up with something before _The Lumberjack Song_ 'cos that fartin' alien might hear! ... What? … with your teeth? What with your teeth? ... Oh."

"You know, Rose Tyler, if you were wearing a skirt like you're supposed to, I wouldn't have to use my teeth first. I'd just dive right in. Rose? Can you hear me? Rose!"

"S..Sorry, dropped the phone."

"Ah."

"Stop grinnin', you wanker!"

"Gentleman that I am, I'll disregard the insult and pick up your mobile and hand it back to you. Can you picture us, Rose Tyler–me on my knees right in front of you, and you starkers from the waist down, thanks to my impressively talented mouth."

"Sounds like you skipped right to th' Act 3 hookin'-up part, Doctor. Oi! I can hear that grin right through my mobile!"

"Rose, I'm starting at your right ankle–that spot that is so ticklish?"

"Makes me giggle all the time when you touch it."

"Not all the time, Rose. After we left old Charlie… Remember?"

"Uhhh."

"Guess you do. So I'm kissing that little spot on the inside of your ankle. You wiggle a bit, but then you sigh. My mouth slowly works its way up the inside of your calf to your knee, kissing, tasting, my breath hot on your skin. I swirl my tongue in the hollow behind your knee."

"Your head is between my thighs?"

"Yeah. That alright?"

"What d'you think? Where are your hands?"

"Around your waist, steadying you, 'cos you're swaying a little now. Weak in the knees, Rose?"

"Always am around you, Doctor."

"Yeah, I know."

"Your hair is chafing my legs."

"Not chafing, Rose… tickling… teasing…stimulating… Erotic. Feel me nodding and twisting my head around between your knees and... other places?"

"Uhhh."

"Another yes. I'm holding you up 'cos you know what's coming when I swirl my tongue into the hollow of your knee, don't you, Rose Tyler?"

"Oh, God."

"You open your legs wider and my tongue skates over your smooth skin. I love the taste of your skin. I could live on you forever… your taste, your touch, your scent… and never want for anything more. You are all I'll ever need because I–well."

"Doctor?"

"There's a streak of moisture glistening on your thigh, a damp, slowly growing mark of need. I put that mark on you, didn't I, Rose? It's for me, isn't it? "

"Yeah."

"Yes, and only mine to claim. Should I go after it with my clever tongue, do you think? Tell me, Rose."

"I…Y-yeah."

"That's my woman. I wrap my hands around your hips to hold you still, 'cos I'm going to take my time and be very thorough… mmm … I get it all, Rose, every bit. It's sweet and musky. I let my breath drift over the tracks my tongue just made on you. You shiver. I smile. My mouth moves to your other knee; I nuzzle it, I kiss it, then I move on. I explore the hollow behind it expertly... I am very thorough. Then my lips start another slow, wet journey. Oh, Rose, your thigh is so smooth, eating you is perfection! I taste you… higher. You are hot and salty–"

"Mmm… wanna taste you, too."

"Later, love. I'm busy down here. My lips caress you, Rose. I worship you with my mouth and my teeth, I savour you all the way up to the join of your thighs… my tongue and breath at your heat, making you shiver, making you so wet. You want me, Rose. I can smell your musk… I can see your desire, like dewdrops within the petals of an opening rosebud, sparkling like diamonds–"

"Didn't know you to be one for flowery simile, Doctor."

"Shut it, Rose, you're ruining the seduction."

"Never! 'Specially now that my hands are on your shoulders, holdin' me steady so I can spread my legs even further apart. I am right in front of you, Doctor, fully open to you… fully exposed… look at me… But there's more you want, yeah? My nails scrape across your scalp an' around the shells of your ears, tease the back of your neck through the soft downy hairs – light, so light you shiver."

"Minx."

"Turnabout, Doctor."

"Rose Tyler, if I do that, we're never going to get where I'm trying to get us."

"Now who's ruinin' the seduction?"

"Rose, you seduce me in my sleep. You seduce me in the middle of a run for our lives. Just by being alive, you seduce me."

"My Doctor, I let my fingers tease all along your long, gorgeous throat, whisperin' over your cool smooth skin and scrapin' against the stubble… I barely touch you, but you feel it all the way down into your balls. I caress the sensitive skin in front of your ears… your eyelids… cheeks… your soft lips… your cool naked skin. My foot is movin', Doctor. Can you feel it… my toes whispering over you like my fingers, over you, teasin' you through your denims. You're hard and hot Doctor–"

"So hard…"

"I can feel your cock twitchin'. I rock the bottom of my foot over you, and you grow for me, lettin' me know how much you want me. My foot slips inside your jumper. My toes tease your stomach and chest– ticklin' all across your skin–and you're lookin' at me with midnight eyes, and your nipples are stiff and swollen, and you're–"

"Rose…"

"You're not laughin' anymore. I wrap my toes around your nipple and squeeze tight."

"Rassilon, yes…"

"All my muscles are very strong, Doctor, very clever, I got all sorts of special clever places that can squeeze you like you wouldn't believe–so tight, so hot, I bet you're thinkin' about that now, yeah? My foot slides along your skin, onto your shoulder. Your jumper's all bunched up and the air feels cold on your chest, but that's not why you're tremblin', is it?"

"Rose…"

"You can taste me on your tongue and you can see how much I want you, how much I lo– love everythin' that you do to me, Doctor. Can you see it right there, right in front of you... me needin' you, Doctor. Only you... my Doctor!"

"Oh, Rose! I dip quickly and my tongue chases a dewdrop out of hiding. Then another. My hands are cupping your bum, holding you to me. I feel the tickle of your hair, and I can smell how much you want me! I kiss you there, slowly–just how you like it–and then I scrape my teeth along the whole naked length of your clitoris. It's hot and swollen, I draw on it, suck it hard between my teeth, and you scream my name. More of your nectar comes out and I suck it off you, Rose, I'm savouring you like a piece of chocolate, and you taste so good, Rose, so good! But that's not enough. I need more, Rose, so I'm gonna go looking."

"Greedy."

"Addicted. One of my hands slides up under your little tank top. Your skin is warm and silky. My nails scrape up your smooth naked skin, between your breasts and across your clavicles... and then they whisper down onto your breast and begin to circle in... in..."

"Ahhh, which breast?"

"The left, it's bigger."

"Your mouth fits around it just fine."

"My mouth is busy elsewhere."

"And your other hand?"

"My other hand is holding you. But you got a free hand, Rose Tyler, the one that's not holding your mobile; what's it doing?"

"Oh, Doctor!"

"My Rose!"

"Oh my Doctor… FUCK IT!"

"Trying, Rose, best I can accomplish with this jiggery-pokeried 21st century mobile."

"No, Doctor! The farting green alien found us, I can hear it at the door!"

"Rose!"

"Doctor, what should– Doctor? Doctor? Bloody hell, the phone went dead!"

Rose hit redial. "Doctor?" she whispered. There was no reply, but it didn't go to TARDIS voice mail. "Doctor, the alien got the door open! We haveta... Doctor? Doctor, are you alright?"

Rose moved further into the heavy drapery, pressed herself against the wall and held her breath as the green alien stomped in.

"Humykin, I know you're in there! Hide and Seek is over–come out, come out, I've found you! The more you prolong it, the more you stink! I can smell an old girl…stale bird… brittle bones."

Careful not to make the drape move, Rose tried the Doctor's speed dial number again. "Pssst, Doctor, can you hear me? Things are gettin' dodgy in here. Where are you? Harriet and I are gonna have to try to make a break–"

"Oh! There's another humykin, a ripe youngster, all hormones and adrenaline." The Slitheen sniffed and smiled. "Fresh enough to bend before she snaps."

Harriet Jones moved out from her hiding place. "No, you green fiend! Take me first! Take me!"

"Heh heh! What is this? Quite the heroine, aren't we? I'll take you next, old bird; your blood and sinews will cleanse my palette. But first I want a sweet treat."

"No," Harriet said in a commanding voice. "You will settle for me and I swear I'll stick in your craw! Rose! Run! Warn the Doctor!"

"Run Rose, Rose run!" the Slitheen squeaked in a singsong childlike voice. "Oh such fun!"

The Slitheen moved, cutting off Harriet from Rose, cutting them both off from the exit. Rose slipped her mobile into her pocket and stepped out to confront the alien. Her plan was to get to Harriet, get her away from the Slitheen, find the Doctor. The details, like always, would have to work themselves out as she went along.

The alien made kissy sounds, disgusting coming out of its ugly, sneering, murderous face.

"Come, little human child. Pucker up, sweet little humykin, and come to me. Let me kiss you with my big, green lips!"

"Nope," a distinctive Northern voice answered from the single doorway, "never going to happen!" The Doctor leaned casually against the lintel, legs crossed at the ankles, arms behind him. He smiled at Rose. "Rose Tyler's lips are for no one but me."

Rose returned the Doctor's smile. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

For a moment there was no one else in the room except for the two of them; their eyes locked and feasting, and telling each other what they still hadn't gotten around to saying out loud.

"Who the hell are you?" the alien growled in its Margaret-voice.

He grinned. "I'm the Doctor, hello!"

"Oh, goody! We can play a game. You be the tall delicious humykin doctor and I'll be your hungry little nurse that's gonna kiss you and eat you right up!"

"Now that game is something else just for Rose and me to play. But since you want something so badly for your big green lips to kiss…" His arm swung up. "How about a big wet noisy smack from this fire extinguisher here."

"Don't you da– _awwwk!_ "

"It was good for me; was it good for you too?" The Doctor pouted down at the unconscious Slitheen. "What, no answer?"

"Oi, Doctor, she should have been more careful what she wished for," Rose laughed as she ran to the Doctor and threw herself into his arms. Harriet Jones approached more formally.

"Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale I presume?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"She won't be unconscious for long. We need to get to the Cabinet room."

"Yes, the Emergency Protocols are there."

"Oh, I really like you! And you, Rose Tyler..."

"Yeah?"

The Doctor looked at Rose as if she were the _pièce de résistance_ on the evening's menu, which wasn't too far from the truth.

"That business we were discussing just before—"

"And on the way here—don't forget." Rose's tongue teased through her smile.

"That too. We're gonna get back to it right after we save the Earth."

 

**~~**

 

 

 

 

  **(BUYING TIME … AND PUTTING IT ON LAYAWAY)**

  

The Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Harriet Jones reached the cabinet room with three Slitheen directly behind them, too close to outrun. He sent the women inside and placed himself in the doorway, ready to make a stand.

As Harriet retrieved the emergency protocols, the Time Lord faced off against the ugly murdering farting aliens with a bottle of brandy, his sonic screwdriver, and a lot of bluster. The Doctor didn't know how good the brandy was, but he knew his bluster was unsurpassed.

"One more move and my sonic device will triplicate the flammability of this alcohol. Whoof! We all go up. So back off."

The Slitheen eyed the Doctor with a cold curiosity. "Who are you?" the alien who called himself Joseph finally asked, "if not human?"

"Who's not human?" Harriet asked Rose.

"He's not human."

"Hush," the Doctor said.

"But he's got a Northern accent," Harriet insisted.

"Lots of planets have a North," Rose echoed the Doctor's response to her when he'd told her he was an alien and she'd realized she didn't care.

Harriet gave Rose a speculative look. "And a South?"

"Oh, yes, a very large, very impressive South."

"I said hush," the Doctor said, turning to Rose with a look that was trying to be severe but pretty much falling under the wheels of a self-satisfied smirk. "Tryin' to save the Earth, here."

Rose's eyes walked the Doctor's body slowly, stopping at his groin on the way back up. He was hard getting harder. She gave him a _cat got the cream_ smile, knowing that one focused look from her was enough to do that to him—that _she_ had the power to do _that_ to _him_. In an atypical moment of unguarded honesty he had confessed to her with quite a lot of tenderness and no little bemusement that she was the only one ever to have that kind of effect on him. She hoped that also meant that he was beginning to feel about her every way she felt about him.

The Doctor took in the way Rose Tyler was looking at him—that way that she had, where her eyes sparked and the tip of her tongue peeked out through her teeth and he got hard (which, yeah, which was _definitely_ something else that had changed in his nine hundred plus years of Earth-saving). He had the almost irresistible urge to slam Rose's body down on the conference table, spread her wide, and pound her into the boards. In all of his immensely long life of fighting evil aliens he'd never had a problem like this arise, not until Rose Tyler came along with him on the TARDIS… and came… and came… came with her legs wrapped around his hips… came with her calves on his shoulders, her toes tickling the back of his head… came with her thighs a vice of sweet sweaty rapture around his… _Blimey!_ He stuck his hands into his jacket pockets and pulled the jacket forward, covering the noticeable beginnings of the erection Rose had given him.

He noticed Harriet watching him curiously; just as he realized it wasn't his north that had caught her attention she coughed and looked away. His murdering adversaries were staring at him too, but malevolently, as if they were ready to unzip their human disguises and attack. Except… he wasn't completely sure what Margaret was looking to unzip. She smiled at him as if picturing a romantic dinner for two with him as the main course. Somebody _please_ drop a bomb on him and put him out of his misery!

Bomb.

Oh.

The Doctor had just had one of his fantastic _if all else fails_ ideas (Even considering he was nine hundred years old, the number of times he'd actually resorted to one of those was more than a little bit scary.)

"Shouldn't we try to run?" Rose asked him quietly. The Doctor shook his head subtly. He pulled himself up to his full height, and smiled down at Margaret Slitheen. "Fascinating history, Downing Street. Two thousand years ago, this was marshland. 1730 it was occupied by a by a Mr. Chicken. He was a nice man. 1796, this was the cabinet room - if the cabinet's in session and in danger, these are about the four safest walls in the whole of Great Britain." He pressed a switch near the door and metal shutters came down. "Installed in 1991. Three inches of steel lining every single wall. They'll never get in."

"How do we get out?" Rose asked expectantly.

"Ah." Rose and Harriet might not survive his fantastic _if all else fails_ idea. A direct missile hit on 10 Downing could kill them… Could kill Rose! His hearts skipped their beats and he felt as if he was suffocating. Despite his superior physiology, the Doctor was suddenly physically sick. All that he was, all that he wanted to be, began and ended with the spatio-temporal locus that carried her name… her warmth and beauty, her beautiful humanity, her strength and her understanding… her lips and heart and heat, her tight little arse, firm irresistible breasts, her tasty clit and... No, he didn't have time to do an inventory, and besides his denims had grown downright uncomfortable and he needed to come up with a plan while he still could walk. He would find another way to defeat the Slitheen and save the Earth. He _couldn't… wouldn't_ lose Rose.

As Harriet looked through the protocols, the Doctor dragged the young man's body into a cupboard.

"What was his name?"

"Which one?" Harriet asked.

"This one –the secretary or whatever he was called."

Harriet hadn't taken the time to ask, and she suddenly felt like a worse kind of monster than the ones outside. The Doctor gently put him to rest with a few soft-spoken words that reflected a wellspring of sadness and regret. Harriet stared at the Doctor unabashedly and marvelled at the humanity in the alien. She was beginning to understand what Rose Tyler saw behind—not just below—the Doctor's unnervingly mad smile and air of smug superiority. She vowed to be a better human herself. Opening the protocols, she found neatly hand-written across the top of one of the pages in mauve ink the statement that _it was indeed possible to save the world attired in frock coat and ruffles, a cravat and curls, celery, and yes thank you even a coif; do not make jokes however quietly_. She wondered what the House of Lords would think of world-saving by a Northern dock worker with a smile like the Joker and a heart larger than his smile.

"What I don't get is when they killed the Prime Minister, why didn't they use him as a disguise," Rose asked.

"That's the device around their necks – compression field – literally shrinks them down a bit."

"Wish I had a compression field, I could fit a size smaller."

The Doctor's storm in the mountains gaze tread Rose's body even more slowly than hers had his. It was sure and thorough, as knowing as a lion picking out its next meal. "You fit perfectly, Rose Tyler," he said.

Harriet blushed. Were a man to look at her like that, all fire and ice and forged steel and hunger, what wouldn't she do if he asked it of her! Dear Lord, people were dying and she was going all Harlequin Romance on herself. "Excuse me, people are dead, this is not the time for making jokes," she stuttered guiltily.

 

~~

 

"The protocols are redundant," Harriet Jones concluded. "They list the people who can help, and they're all dead downstairs."

"Hasn't it got like, defence codes and things," Rose asked. "Can we just launch a nuclear bomb at 'em?"

The Doctor stared at Rose, totally gobsmacked. She couldn't realize the implications! He started to tell her how dangerous that was, how _if all else fails_ it had to be.

Harriet opened her mouth first. "You're a very violent young woman."

Leaving Harriet to sort Rose out, the Doctor turned back to the mantelpiece. Using the sonic to pretend to scan even when it made no sense always reassured his companions while he figured out what to do without needless interruption.

"I'm serious! We could!" Rose looked to him to back her up. He finished resonating the wood walls, moved on to the fireplace. After that he'd do the closets, then he'd start on the crested decanters and goblets. He was going to run out of logical things to resonate. Earth was running out of time. He was out of options. He was going to have to kill the woman he… kill the woman he…

"Well, there's nothing like that in here," Harriet said above the maddening _whir_ of the Doctor's screwdriver on metal and chimney stone. "Nuclear strikes do need a release code, yes, but it's kept secret by the United Nations."

"Say that again!" the Doctor ordered, turning to look at them.

"What, about the codes?" Harriet asked.

The Doctor looked over at Rose and swallowed hard. _Only if all else fails_. He turned back to Harriet Jones. "Anything. All of it."

 

  **~~**

 

"Mickey the Idiot—I might just choke before I finish this sentence, but eh—I need you."

Ah, but his plan was sweeter than a bag of jelly babies! He'd talk Mickey through the U.N.'s security layers into U.N.I.T. and get a message to Lethbridge-Stewart who, knowing the man, was not merely still being kept in the loop but was holding the ends together for them. Lethbridge-Stewart would convince the U.N. to let him run the operation, then deliver an ultimatum to the invaders: leave Earth immediately or suffer a surgical missile strike. The Slitheen would turn tail and run, defeated by a weapon more powerful than even a nuclear missile: that military brilliance, unchallengeable authority and intimidating glower that had levelled Heads of State and ignoble foes alike, and once or twice a Time Lord.

It wasn't the first time the Doctor put everything in that man's hands, trusting him the way the Time Lord trusted few others, certainly no other military person; and no matter how much or how loudly Lethbridge-Stewart insisted otherwise, it probably wouldn't be the last.

The Doctor glanced at his lover and let himself smile, his hearts swelling with relief and his thoughts with ideas for their next great adventure.

But the universe was a sadistic bitch who had a thing against him.

No, actually that was Rose's mum… and Jackie Tyler took her calling seriously.

"I've seen this life of yours, Doctor. And maybe you get off on it. And maybe you think it's all clever and smart, but you tell me. Just answer me this—is my daughter safe?"

 

**~~**

 

"They're upgrading in the Brigadier's neighbourhood," Mickey informed the Doctor. "Everything's gone black: no electricity, no lights, no phone—an' that's just bloody typical I tried to track down a neighbour with a mobile, to get a message through to your man, but the system is overloaded. And the net." He laughed ruefully. "It'd be easier to get a dog whistle and send a message to his dog than him. Oi, Doctor, do you speak dog?" He heard the Doctor mumble something.

"Get to one of the emergency contacts, Mickey; they'll know how to reach Alistair."

"There's loads of emergency numbers," Mickey said, "and I already tried them all. They're all on voicemail."

"Voicemail dooms us all," Harriet Jones declared in undisguised disgust.

"Maybe someone should update the protocols into the 21st century," Rose suggested. "Like, what's this bit here about unnecessary pat-downs for nitro-9 and retributory fat lips?"

The Doctor paused, leaned against the wall and smiled with fond remembrance. But his smile didn't last as he listened to the courageous humans joking, never giving up hope even as their planet teetered on the brink of annihilation and they faced death.

Faced death.

_If all else failed._

His hearts were broken.

"If we could just get out of here—" Rose started.

"There's a way out."

"What?" Rose turned to stare at the Doctor, incredulous and confused.

"There's always been a way out," he told her softly. She strode toward him wearing that _Are you fuckin' with me, Doctor Impressive?_ look that always made him want to wipe it off her face starting at her clit and ending with her screaming his name. She set herself across the conference table from him. Immovable object. Irresistible lips.

"Then why don't we use it?"

Avoiding Rose's eyes, he moved to the speakerphone to talk to Jackie, who refused to ring off and had been giving both him and Micky the maybe-not-an-idiot grief, asking them both questions they didn't want to answer.

How soddin' screwed up was his life when he _chose_ to talk to Jackie Tyler rather than Rose?

"Because I can't guarantee your daughter would be safe."

"Don't you dare." Jackie's voice was almost hysterical. "Whatever it is, don't you dare!"

"That's the thing, if I don't dare, everyone dies." He had over nine hundred years of carrying the responsibility for the safety of the cosmos. Sometimes all he really wanted to do was hide himself in a closet until Time itself ended and cry.

"Do it," Rose said.

He gawped at her. "You don't even know what it is, you'd just let me?"

"Yeah."

Maybe it didn't matter who said the words first. Maybe words didn't matter as much as the Doctor and Rose Tyler thought; maybe what they saw in each other's eyes said everything they each needed to say, and was everything they both needed to hear. Maybe they understood somewhere in the parts of their souls that couldn't look away, parts deep and unknown but wiser than intellect and less capricious than hearts, that truths come at their own time and in their own way, be it in two hands reflexively reaching for each other, body dancing against body in a slick, sensual _pas de deux_ they were born knowing, or with a leap of faith in a tackily decorated meeting room surrounded by caricature evil aliens.

The Doctor and Rose Tyler stared at each other… just stared. The Doctor started at a jolt of mental contact, felt the flare and burn of a communion as powerful as any he'd ever felt before with any of his people, gasped at the presage of a forever he had stopped believing in a lifetime ago. Terrified and hopeful with the wonder of it, he was ready to leap across the table to Rose and drop to his knees in awe before her. Maybe the universe was going to give him a break after all!

Maybe, but Jackie Tyler didn't.

"Please, Doctor. Please!" Jackie's voice shattered whatever courage, or foolhardiness, the Doctor had mustered. "She's my daughter, she's just a kid!"

"Do you think I don't know that?" he said sadly, Reality's bitch as always. "Because this is my life, Jackie, it's not fun, it's not smart; it's just standing up and making a decision because nobody else will."

"Then what're you waiting for?"

Rose's soft voice and trust-filled amber eyes called the Doctor back into their communion. She owned him, Rose Tyler did, with a completeness and a kind of peace, even in that desperate situation, that the Doctor knew he'd crave as long as he lived. Naked before her, his Rose, his hearts answered. "I could save the world but lose you."

Lord of Time he was, but the Doctor couldn't have said if their communion lasted seconds or hours. He felt a confusion of time lines twisting around the conference table—twisting around Rose and him—too nebulous for him to read let alone grasp hold of. Entelechies fought for dominance. One discordant note in the symphony of creation, insistent and unrelenting, sent a shudder through him. Then, beyond the confine of all possible realities a wolf howled. The cosmos stopped expanding and Time held its breath. Discord faded into mere truncated possibility. Just beyond his reach, a timeline glowed and grew and shimmered to the melody of wolfsong.

The Doctor's Time Lord senses reeled. Rose Tyler's lips turned up into a smile that was either shy or enigmatic—and for a moment out of time it drove the Doctor crazy wondering which. _What have you gotten yourself into?_ his impressive intellect asked him, thoroughly shaken and useless.

The damn conference table was between him and Rose… shouldn't be… Then it wasn't. The Doctor was holding Rose, one arm wrapped around her waist keeping her tight against him. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes, into those amber orbs of welcoming, soul-filled, depthless trust, and thanked whatever small kindness the cosmos had left for him for this chance to dive in hearts first.

He leaned in to kiss Rose Tyler but suddenly stopped. Time. Time gave him something to concentrate on, something other than his throbbing erection and the woman writhing against it.

"Doctor," Rose whispered. He picked her up and all but threw her onto the conference table. "Doctor? What—"

"We're phased out of local time and space, Rose. Harriet can't see us; your mum can't hear us. It's just us."

"And the table." Rose grinned, patting the high-gloss polished wood.

And the table," he agreed. Firmly he lifted her bum and dragged off her denims then freed himself. Grabbing her behind the knees he yanked her to him and entered her with such single-minded intent that she slid back on the table, her surprised cry almost drowning out his voracious groan. He moved up the table with her, not allowing their bodies' connection to break. He _needed_ to fill her… _needed_ to feel Rose tightening around him. He dragged her legs up onto his shoulders, all but folding her in thirds, pushed deeper, and ground against her clit until she shrieked. Rose did something with her body that shifted him forward and made him sink in even deeper, though the Doctor wouldn't have believed it even possible. She contracted her muscles around his shaft and grinned. Her eyes compelled him, steady and hungry and overly bright with emotion. Her breasts were close enough to uncover and take with a wanton hunger, her lips near enough to breach and soft enough to bruise. With a cry of possession he took everything of her he could, oblivious to all but his fever for this woman he was beginning to believe he had been incarnated to love. Her sweet strong body met his thrust for thrust, and her tight greedy heat fit him perfectly. When he growled his need, Rose's voice answered, a feral howl of possession that should have terrified him were he even halfway able to think. The Doctor threw his head back and came with a shout. Rose followed with a triumphant cry.

Rose clutched the Doctor tightly and rode the tide of shuddering pleasure. Not having to hold back was one of the perks of shagging her Lord of Time, as were the long immensely satisfying orgasms. THE perk of shagging a Time Lord was still juddering inside her, leading Rose into the most delightful aftershocks, him all noisy and sweaty and kind of messy and just oh just so perfect.

Her fingers stroked her lover's body lightly, through his hair, over his neck, across his shoulders and back in tender, nonsensical graffiti. "Can you make time stay wonky so you can walk out of this room without them knowing," Rose asked him when he had stilled. Her eyes sparkled through the emotions she let fill them. Her tongue poked naughtily through a thoroughly cheeky smile. "Though you may have to leave me on the table to wait a bit 'til my legs begin to work again."

He gave her a smug grin but shook his head. "I'm not leaving you here alone even for a second. Give me a minute to figure this… Slitheen are all over the building, too many to find and disarm even with Time Lord tricks. I can get you and Harriet to the TARDIS, get you away from here. Then I'll come back and give them an ultimatum—"

"You already did that."

"I only said I'd stop them."

"I'm not leaving 10 Downing without you and I'm not gonna wait in the TARDIS while you face them on your own."

"Rose, I'm not letting you—"

Rose gave the Doctor a look Jackie would have been proud of. "Go on with you, then. Put yourself together. We have a planet to save."

"I won't lose you!"

"'Course not," she grinned, "and I promise I won't wander off."

"Now she listens to me," he grumbled.

When they were ready, the Doctor grabbed Rose by the upper arms, dragged her against him, and kissed her hard. "Rose, I don't know what's going to happen."

"I do. You're going to beat them and save the Earth."

"Rose—"

"Doctor, you're going to figure a way to blow this place up around us but not with us. Remember that tree we christened the day after you blew up my job?"

"Yeah, the one I went back in time and planted to take you against—"

Rose grinned. "Installed in 1991; three inches of something they think is steel lining every single wall. Make sure you get the date right this time."

The Doctor looked at Rose with a kind of awe. "Rose Tyler, you are a genius!"

With a matching grin Rose raised her mobile. "Got that recorded, Doctor; I'm never gonna let you forget you said it."

"Are you saying you're going to make my whole life miserable, you wicked woman?"

"Oh, yeah! Gonna dedicate my entire life to perfecting my wicked skills on you."

The Doctor gave Rose's bum a good whack, then kissed her so hard Rose felt it in her toes.

"Quiet now, I'm putting us back in phase."

Rose nodded as the Doctor moved back to his original place on the opposite side of the conference table; but just as he got N-space and non-linear time sorted out, Rose grinned that bloody fantastic grin and said, "an' then we're going back to the TARDIS an' I'm not letting you out of bed until we're both too sore to stay." He grinned back, a smile that only grew with Harriet's order to go for broke.

 

**~~**

 

Harriet tapped the steel shutters that secured the cabinet room. "How solid are these?"

"Not solid enough, built for short range attack, nothing this big."

"Alright," Rose said, "now I'm making the decision. I'm not gonna die, we're gonna ride this one out." She opened the cupboard door, looked around, top and bottom, and knocked on the lintel. "It's like what they say about earthquakes, you can survive 'em by standing under a doorframe. Now this cupboard's small so it's strong. Come and help me, Harriet. Doctor, you finish what you have to do out here then get your gorgeous bum inside with us."

"Doctor," Harriet worried, "We have minutes at most."

"Won't take any time at all, Harriet." He winked at Rose.

The Doctor joined Rose and Harriet seconds later squeezing down between them on the cupboard floor. Harriet wrapped her arm through his and he gave her a manic grin. "Harriet, you've been fantastic, and I have this feeling that we'll get out of here and then you'll be even more fantastic." He pulled Rose to him and planted a soft kiss on the top of her head.

"Everything ready, Doctor?"

His clever, impressive, fantastic Rose—he smiled at her, confident the shielding he'd installed would protect them. "Yes, Rose. It'll be any minute now; get ready."

"Hold on, my mobile is ringing."

"Rose, tell your mum you'll call her after the missile hits."

"It's not Mum, Doctor. "

"Thank Mickey for all his…. I mean, tell Mickey the idiot unless he's mucked this up, in about twenty seconds the missile he shot off at you is gonna hit."

But it wasn't Mickey either.

"Hello. Yes." Rose recognized the distinctive coldly mechanical stuttering of the gutteral voice around unfamiliar English syllables.

"What? Who? Are you—? Sure, ta."

"Rose?"

"She said don't worry, we're gonna get out of this, we'll be fine."

"Who was it, Rose?"

"Someone who helped me when Harriet and I were running from the Slitheen. We haven't met yet but she knows how to loop."

What's that s'posed to mean?"

Rose wrapped her arm through the Doctor's, burrowed into his side, and grinned up at him. "She knows you, though. An' she said you're a prick but you're gonna say it."

"What?! Who? What am I gonna say?"

Rose shook her head. "Nah, nothin." She looked up at the Doctor curiously. "Doctor, what did you mean before, when you said you could save the world but lose me?"

For two nanoseconds the Time Lord looked just like any other bloke would look under those circumstances—having just accidentally let on to the woman he loves how much he loves her and the missile is still too far away to do him any good. But he was, after all, Lord of Time. Time flies when you're having… second thoughts. He did what he did best. Harriet Jones whispered _Hannibal_. He squeezed Rose's hand and grinned happily and the world around them blew up.

**~~**

Harriet Jones was proving herself brilliant at stemming the resultant general hysteria and fending off the media feeding frenzy. She directed the military's cleanup and damage control, and interfaced with U.N.I.T. as if she'd be doing it for years. She even succoured and finessed one somewhat bemused Brigadier General (Retd), even as she enlightened and admonished him about out-of-date protocols and the dismal, nearly disastrous failings of current mobile communications technology, the U.K.'s power grid, and a clueless U.N.

She did, however, ultimately find herself on the receiving end of some of her own down-the-rabbit-hole type bemusement as she was pressed by the Brig for meticulous details— but not how Mickey Smith had so easily gotten control of a U.N. missile and flown it into Number Ten from a laptop (which she'd expected after all and been quite ready for); rather, it was the Doctor's physical appearance, grooming and attire choices, and most outstanding personality quirks that the Brigadier fixated on (if she might use that expression, thank you very much) in his questioning.

Dismissing Harriet with a smiling but brusque _Well done Miss Jones, thank you_ , Lethbridge-Stewart then cheerlessly rummaged through the rubble of Number Ten, the broken idyll of his heretofore uneventful (and somewhat boring) retirement, and his peace of mind for the blue police box; and the tall, lean, black-leather-jacketed, handsome fortyish man with soldier's haircut, piercing blue eyes, brusque and knowing manner, mercurial character, manic grin, and tiny, sparkling blonde who apparently had some measure of control over him. Alistair didn't search too hard; the Doctor would allow himself to be found when— no, _if_ — he felt like it.

Harriet's debriefing and the Brig's dress-down had afforded the Doctor and Rose the opportunity to slip away with ease. The Doctor stole an Aston Martin DB9 and Rose Tyler laughed and teased him all the way back to the TARDIS. The Time Lord rushed Rose inside and rushed the TARDIS into the time vortex. Then he pulled his lover to him with a smug confidence in his ability to replace her delightful chortles and giggles with other, even more fantastic Rose Tyler sounds.

Feeling the throb of the Doctor's post-incendiary hard-on Rose fell quiet.

Briefly.

 

**~~**

 

 

 

**(STALLING FOR TIME… OR MAYBE FOR FEAR)**

 

_[a/n: For permission to use the manips please contact our artist at scifiangel.livejournal.com]_

 

  

"You're sure?" Rose asked.

"Of course I'm sure." The Doctor looked hurt and offended.

"You were sure last time," Rose reminded him, "and you were off by a year."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, stepped out of the TARDIS and turned to her. "We're part of events now, Rose Tyler, so trust me or hide inside the ship forever."

"Rose–? " Rose heard her mum call. She bit her lip uncertainly.

The Doctor grinned and extended his hand; Rose took it tentatively and he pulled her out onto Mickey's balcony. "It's exactly fourteen seconds after the hit. Now, give your mum a hug and tell her you're fine."

When Rose's mum finally let her daughter go, the older Tyler woman threw herself at the Doctor happily. He stiffly accepted her hug, keeping an eye on her striking arm the whole time. He and Mickey had an awkward moment, then a slightly less than awkward one, then Mickey nodded and the Doctor smiled, and the two of them indulged themselves in a bit of spirited _two geeky boffins who stole a missile from the U.N. and flew it into 10 Downing_ bonding. The Doctor helped clean up the mess that Strickland Slitheen had made when Mickey exploded him and then reinforced the boy's flat with some undetectable advanced security that included alien detectors. As the Doctor worked, Rose watched his marvelous bum wiggle and flex and cry out to be bitten. From the combination of silence and half-verbalized sounds coming the woman standing next to her Rose got the sick feeling she wasn't the only Tyler woman appreciating the Time Lord's arse.

Mickey noticed too and rolled his eyes.

Rose sweet-talked the Doctor into letting her mum into his TARDIS, and scared her mum into promising not to touch anything. When they got to Jackie's flat the Doctor reinforced Jackie's door and added the same kind of undetectable security system that he'd given Mickey earlier. Rose dragged her mum into the kitchen to make tea and keep her line of sight off the Doctor. Jackie awkwardly tried to start a bit of small talk, a sure sign some mother-daughter unpleasantness would begin as soon as the Doctor left them.

"So, what you and the Doctor plannin' to do now, Rose?"

"Well, he blew up Number 10, so shaggin' in every room is out," Rose answered, preoccupied with brooding over the general _yucky blechness_ of her mum ogling her lover.

"What?!!"

"Joke, Mum." Rose grinned quickly. Jackie ground her teeth and Rose forged ahead. "We're gonna hop forward a few years an' make sure no other Slitheen come to Earth to cause trouble. Won't take long."

"'Nother year that alien twit's gonna owe me," Jackie murmured.

Jackie told the Doctor it was only fair he pay for the sofa table that replaced the one he'd broken. He offered to fix the original table but Jackie pointed out _pointedly_ that she'd thrown the pieces out almost a year ago.

Rose stuck around to pack a big duffel to take back to the TARDIS while her mum fussed a bit over her almost being dead and dust on account of _that alien_. But before she let the Doctor leave without her, Rose draped his large hand over the TARDIS key hanging off the long thin chain around her neck (and the warm silken breast conveniently semi-bared beneath it) and told him she had his key and his number so he'd better not forget to be back for her in two hours. The Doctor laughed and kissed her, slipping his tongue down her throat and two fingers into her willing heat, then informed her smugly that just in case she wandered off and got lost he'd just turned on his homing beacon.

Even so, Rose watched the Doctor saunter off with a sick feeling of dread and nausea rising from the pit of her stomach into her throat. She told herself it was just a lingering reaction to having a missile dropped on her, maybe causing early PMS. She also told herself that despite what her future friend had said earlier on the mobile, the Doctor wasn't just another thoughtless, self-absorbed, horny male prick who tended to get the time and place of landings wrong when he was showing off (or when certain parts of him were). He also was an alien with alien thoughts and alien feelings and an alien's alien ability or maybe inability to love the way that humans do.

But she'd swear that in the Cabinet room his eyes had been telling her everything she'd been wanting his mouth to say from the moment Henrick's explosion blew her destiny into his hands and her knickers into the bin. That way he looked across the table at her–it had held her like treacle and made her heart beat faster than adrenaline. He'd looked at her like that, and he'd said…

Well, he'd said…

Damn that confounding man and his bloody big gob! What had he said, really?

When he'd taken her hand in Henricks sub-basement Rose knew she was connected to him in a special way, but when their eyes locked across the conference table she'd suddenly seen she was bound and locked to the Doctor body, heart, and soul. But she also saw that she was more herself just as much, and more free than she'd ever thought she could be. Free of gravity, which was kinda weird (although she'd felt the Earth and maybe even the galaxy turnin' when their eyes were locked). Free of a lot of bad stuff–stuff she couldn't quite explain but she knew was worse than not runnin' fast enough or not being able to figure a way to beat the odds. Somehow she was free of her body if she wanted t'be– free to soar with him, with her Doctor, out of the building, off the planet and just… just everywhere… even standin' still. The TARDIS was part of them, yeah, and the Doctor and her, they were _everything_. It had been just about the most terrifyin' and excitin' and confusin' and wonderful feeling she ever had, even with them bloody well about to die.

_I could save the world but lose you_.

What was _that_ s'posed to mean? Was it Time Lord for _Crikey, Rose, this isn't the easy decision it should be for someone whose job description is 'Swoop in in the nick of time and save the Earth'_? Or was it like him tellin' Gwyneth that she had to send the Gelth back through the rift or the world would be destroyed? Was it just him statin' the obvious, reviewing' the situation, spellin' it out for the stupid ape?

But his eyes–oh blimey, his eyes!

Time was racin' away from her and him but standin' still within them and holdin' its breath and shoutin' the rest of everything away. And it was all in his eyes.

With a deep sigh Rose threw herself onto the bed. Her duffel fell to the floor, tipping out most of the clothes and whatnot she'd already packed. She picked up the little pair of knickers she'd packed with the intention of wearing for no other reason than to make the Doctor forget his respiratory bypass. She twisted the thong between her teeth and tried to think about things like the Doctor would. (She didn't dwell much, not too much anyway, on the idea that by now, with his teeth around her knickers, the Doctor would have two fingers inside her and be thinking about keeping her writhing and moaning until neither of them was much interested in doing any thinking at all.)

What was she to him besides his lover? Was she his everything like he'd told poor Jabe? Or like he told her mum, was she the reason he'd even consider lettin' evil go unstopped, or let a world be destroyed and people die?

The Doctor never thought about things, just did what needed to be done especially when it came to blowin' something up. But because of her he actually had been thinkin' about whether or not to do it. Didn't that change everything the Doctor was? Didn't it change what he'd been certain was the right thing to do, for like nine hundred years?

She didn't like those questions. But she wouldn't let them go away.

What would he have done if there hadn't been another way to stop the Slitheen from destroyin' Earth? What if because of all that becomin' a part of events crossin' your own time line muckin' about and causin' a paradox Time Lord stuff it was either blow 10 Downing or give up the Earth?

Her mum… Mickey… everyone…

And it would have been her fault.

Blimey.

She loved him–she was more certain of that than of anything else. And she loved travelin' the stars with him. But was she really gonna have to take on the responsibility for makin' him be himself all the time? That was totally unfair and insensitive and… and… _unclever_ and unimpressive and… and stupid of the Doctor to put that on her!

Prick.

Just like her future girlfriend said.

Someday she might have to let him go before it got to the point he couldn't be the Doctor properly. No, Rose figured, it was more likely that as soon as he realized he'd been growin' emotionally dependent on her he'd suddenly go all stroppy over some lame human ape domestics that he'd blame on her or maybe her mum, and then he'd scarper.

It'd be worst if she didn't do anything 'bout it and he didn't notice and one day he's smacked in the face with a _save the world but lose you_ and there's absolutely no way to jiggery pokery his way out of it. Whichever he chooses, the Doctor would blame himself for the other and it'd eat at him for the rest of his life–she knew it, oh she knew him! And all that pain of what he wished hadn't happened and what he couldn't have stopped would kill the Doctor's beautiful spirit. That'd be her fault too.

How did it all get so bleedin' intense so fast? So friggin' bloody _effin'_ hard? Couldn't they be lovers and have fantastic sex all the time and be totally in love and _together_ and keep havin' mind-blowin' adventures without the fate of the Universe hangin' on it different than the way it normally did?

Bollocks.

So _save the world but lose you_ shaggin' was off the table (an', well, off every other place the Doctor figured to do) and maybe she was a little relieved at that 'cos this time felt different. He was different. This time he'd been… it was fierce and almost painful hard, and him so quiet for a change and her just a little scared.

"No _maybe let the world die for you_ love for you, Rose Marion Tyler." She sighed. That was jus' fine, it was, yeah. Keep it hot but not so intense. Keep it from goin' any further, take it down a notch or two even. Keep it like it was with Jimmy before it got bad– But keep the Doctor wantin' her, because even if it was for the best for him and for the people he'd help, him leaving' her would destroy her.

They would still have fantastic non-stop shaggin'… indulge a few more of his little kinks, yeah, keep him grinnin' an' noisy an… Rose suddenly remembered something her future friend had told her. She said it out loud in the woman's funny singsong foreign accent and it made her feel better. "All will proceed as it must. The male prick will learn! You will dom-i-nate, force him to obey! All male pricks who do not obey will be exterminated!” She giggled. "Don't know about the exterminatin', but dominatin' sounds like a plan–he really liked when I made his eyes spin and his tail wag and that impressive brain of his totally useless for anything but doin' what I tol' him."

Maybe she could run out now and pick up red stiletto-heel boots and a leather garter belt to wear with the thong. (The TARDIS could make them of course, but Rose still wasn't sure if the ship approved of the Doctor's little kinks.) Once they were in the vortex she'd surprise him with some no-strings just ropes and pulleys shaggin'. Yeah. She was gonna release her inner Dominatrix Sex Goddess. An' when she did the Doctor was gonna ask for the number of the truck that hit 'im.

Her mobile rang. She pulled it out of a pocket.

_TARDIS calling._

Speak of the insensitive male prick.

 

~~

 

The Doctor couldn't understand why it would take Rose so long just to grab a couple of things and kiss her mum good-bye. He knew Jackie didn't want her daughter to go away with him, and the female of most every species wields a lot of mum power. Was Jackie Tyler keeping his Rose a prisoner of love? No, that just wouldn't do: Rose was _his_ prisoner of love.

That is to say…

He couldn't believe he'd admitted to Rose how thoroughly he was in love with her. Not in those exact words but it was clear enough–some things the TARDIS didn't need to translate. And it wasn't like he was required to say those exact three English words in that particular order anyway, he wasn't human so their rules didn't apply to him. Being human, it was easier for Rose Tyler to say and she should have to say it first–not _have to_ exactly but certainly something more substantial than _do it, what're you waitin' for_ because it was a human thing to say and he wasn't human he was an inscrutable insane alien he was and Rose Tyler had better remember that.

He'd never been a settle-down kind of Gallifreyan, nope no way, and no Time Lord would be barmy enough to ever even consider joining with an ape or settling down somewhere with good ape preschools, maybe close to Alistair…

John or Harry would be intimidated into baby-sitting easier…

Nope, never gonna happen, certainly not _this_ Time Lord. And Jackie Tyler was _not_ getting a bedroom on his TARDIS! But just to be on the safe side though, just in case something went kinda pear-shaped (and he stopped and smiled just a tiny bit at the thought of a pear-shaped Rose Tyler) he might want to know… stuff. Maybe while Rose was extricating herself from Jackie's grasp he should run a couple of tests on Rose's DNA, do a syzygy mapping and maybe a compatibility test. Should he check if any human alleles could be dominant? A wild card would spice things up, though, especially in a little girl–

_Rassilon_ , loving that woman had driven him mental!

But the good news was if the shit hit the fan he could plead temporary insanity from the pressure of being about to bomb Number 10, take out what was left of the British government, possibly start a nuclear war that would decimate Earth, and piss off Alistair something fierce.

The bad news was that now he knew for sure that if Rose stayed with him one day he'd have to decide whether to let her die to save some strangers that mattered more only because he wasn't in love with them.

He deleted the chromosomal mappings and dumped the whole bloody stupid mistake in the bin. Then he called Rose.

"Rose, you can stay there if you want," he taunted, "but right now there's this plasma storm brewing in the Horse Head nebula. Fires are burning ten million miles wide. I could fly the TARDIS right into the heart of it then ride the shock wave all the way out– hurtle right across the sky and end up anywhere! Your choice. We could make love in the slipstream of an expanding galaxy or the final sighs of a dying star. I can take you before space and time begin– enter your sweet body in the ineffable emptiness before becoming. Think of it Rose. . . _In the Beginning . . ._ our bodies all there is to define the form and substance of the physical dimension, our racing heartsbeats marking the birth of time. And the first essence of light will be the flaring of gilded joy in your eyes, the first sound the slapping of our bodies and our cries of ecstasy. And the universe will explode and expand in the riptide of our passion–"

"Doctor," Rose broke in. "It sounds like poetry you're talkin'. What are you really sayin'?"

"Ah, Rose Tyler, I'm saying I can time it so you orgasm with the big bang."

Rose snorted. "Yeah, like that's never happened before."

The Doctor chuckled. "Don't let on to Hawking; it'd destroy his paradigm and break his heart."

When Rose finally got back, she was wearing a top that was a more middle than top–and that wasn't saying much–and a skirt that would settle all questions of her natural hair colour any time she tipped back more than seven degrees past the vertical axis. The Doctor's impressive Time Lord brain immediately began making a list of every thing on the TARDIS that would work and the surfaces he could have his ship modify to meet that specification just for fun. So it was understandable that it took him a few seconds to realize that she'd brought Mickey and Jackie back with her, the both of them loaded down with shopping bags and shoe boxes and duffels.

"Domestics," he grumbled uneasily.

 

~~

 

"You're right Mickey. I am dangerous. I don't want anyone following me."

"How can you say that and then take her with you? You aimed a missile at her, mate."

"You flew it," the Doctor snapped. But Mickey was right, and the boy had fought him, fought him hard, until it was clear there was no alternative. "You could look after her. Come with us."

"I can't. This life of yours … it's just too much. I couldn't do it. I don't want to be the one you have to worry about when you should have more important things on your mind." They both looked at Rose. "I'll be a liability, Doctor."

"You won't."

"Maybe I won't like what I'll be instead."

"Know what you are, Mickey Smith?"

"Yeah, a stupid ape."

"Mickey, you're selfless and clever and courageous and wise beyond your handful of human years." Off Mickey's look he said, "Takes wisdom to look at something and see it. Takes a lot of courage to see yourself and tell it out loud." He blinked, scratched his head and shrugged. "But don't ever remind me I said it. Actually I never did say, you're just hearing things. You're an idiot, Mickey; I'm gonna tell you every time I see you until you're ready to tell me you're not. Yeah?"

Mickey Smith nodded. "Doctor, the only woman I'll ever want wants you. For a year people thought I was a murderer because of you. I got no reason to like you. When we met I called you a _thing_ – No! Let me finish. I want you to know I think you're the thing that keeps it all balanced to the side of good, to the light. I got a feelin' you may be the only thing we got going for us. But I love Rose and I'm still gonna fight you for her every chance I get."

 

~~

 

Before the TARDIS dematerialized the Doctor flipped on the view screen, looked outside, and made a face. "Your Mum's holding her watch up in front of her face, Rose; she's going to count the seconds 'til we're back."

Rose giggled. "Don't doubt it; but she shouldn't count on you bein' punctual."

"Oi! It's _your_ fault; you told her ten seconds. Your boyfriend's sitting out there too."

Rose rolled her eyes at the Doctor. "My alien's in here."

" _Your_ alien? Greedy human girl."

"Wha's that s'posedta mean?"

"You tell me; you invited him to come with us." He put on that falsetto he was getting so good at for annoying Rose, " _Come with us, Mickey; there's plenty of room._ Is that what took you so long: tracking down ol' vinegar mouth?"

“Oi! I had to pack and say goodbye to Mum! Besides, I had some thinkin’ to do.”

Ah. Rose was gonna ask him again what he'd been on about. She was tenacious and clever but he'd reverse and sidestep and spin so brilliantly on his earlier admission of love that she would think he had taps on the soles of his shoes. This thing he had for Rose Tyler was too dangerous for her and for the universe.

“Something happened in old Number Ten that got you thinking! You actually got some deep thoughts in your sexy little human brain now, Rose Tyler?"

"Oi, you! I can be deep," she replied.

"Yeah you can." He smirked as his hands dropped to his fly. "Fill me in then."

Rose threw her duffel at him. “It’s always ‘bout you innit?"

The Doctor shrugged his eyebrows. "World revolves around me, told you once, didn't I."

Rose's inner Goddess was ready to puke. "Then maybe you can use your influence to get us a reservation someplace that isn't just a large flat surface that gives me splinters or leaves table burns on my back."

(Ah! Arthur's table in the TARDIS's Druid dining room–he'd forgotten about that!)

"Doctor, I know that grin… and _that_ is not what I was thinking."

"It'll take me no more than three seconds to change your mind."

"Pretty cocky, aren't ya Doctor!"

"Yeah, and that's one of the things you love most about me, Rose Tyler," he drawled huskily. Rose opened her mouth then shut it and bit her lip. He grinned. "Figure of speech, Rose. Don't get your knickers in a knot."

"Another figure of speech?" She looked the Doctor up and down then turned her back on him and leaned forward from the hip, more than enough. "They're not."

She sauntered purposefully out of the control room. He followed her. What else could the Time Lord do–he was just a bloke after all.

When the Doctor caught up with Rose, he crowded her up against the wall, covered her body with his and slid two fingers up past her knickers. The tang of his desire flooded Rose's head and his intention pressed into her stomach hot and hard and gloriously insistent despite layers of clothing. Arousal churned in her core. Rocking forward, she looked up at him and licked her lips. Their eyes met.

The smug grinnin' git obviously knew he had proven his point: she wanted him. Of course she wanted him! She always wanted him! But it was time for a little dominatin'. Definitely. She let her inner Goddess free and clenched so tightly around the Doctor's fingers that his mouth dropped open. "Doctor, do you ever think about goin' to places where the situation isn't combustible and you don't have to save the general populace and no one wants to kill us? Someplace friendly and fun that doesn't end up explodin' in flames with us running for our lives."

The Doctor looked as if he'd just found a wardrobe full of rotted celery an earlier him had neglected to refrigerate. “You mean I knock on your door, hand you flowers and chocolates, perspire into my itchy ill-fitting suit that I wore to make a good impression on your mum, then I take you someplace popular where no one has any real fun except the suck-up I have to tip big at the end, but at least your fancy expensive new dress stays clean?” He pulled away from his lover. "A date, Rose? That's what you been thinking about after… now?" Rassilon, he sounded like Bridget Jones! His voice had even gone up half an octave.

"After now?"

“For one thing it's so human… Dating."

"I wasn't talkin' about…. Wait. Datin' is human but shaggin' isn't?"

"Shagging is universal, Rose. Shagging is an essential part of the reproductive imperative. Survival of the species depends on it…. not that there's any of that going on in the TARDIS."

"No, of course not."

They stared at each other until the Doctor broke the stormy silence. "And what’s wrong with shagging? Shagging is software with the preferences selected and automatic updates, it's chess on a six dimensional board, 'Clue' with all the cards turned up."

"Strip poker with nothingta hide, no bluffin' 'cos everything's out in th'open."

"Exactly!" He grinned. "It's honest and adventurous and… and it doesn't give you hives. A bloke doesn't haveta worry throughout it all if she's gonna let you kiss her or whether she's the kind of female who puts out."

"Didn't feel like you were worried what kind of female I was when you pulled down my pyjama bottoms and took me from behind in Mum's livin' room."

"Didn't see the need to ask permission after you jumped me in Henrick's." Rose glared at him, and because the Doctor wasn't really sure how many regenerations he had left (though he knew for a fact he'd love her through all of them, even if he shouldn't say) he backtracked. "You had just come back to save my life, almost gotten us both blown up, and I wanted you even more than you wanted me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You're acting like I've never taken you anywhere impressive! Every place I've taken you has been unique and fantastic and impossible for someone without a TARDIS." Off Rose's knowing look, the Doctor rolled his eyes. "So maybe we save a world or some people or stop an invasion along the way. If we both were human, if we were on a date, Rose Tyler, it'd be dinner and a show."

Rose chuckled, sort of. "I see. An' me getting' almost fried, almost body-snatched, almost turned into a fat suit, and almost blown up was the show part?"

"Maybe, maybe not." He smirked. "But I never hear ya complain about all the eating that gets done when we're together."

"It's just… you know you promised to show me all around 10 Downing, which may not mean much to you but was kinda special to me, being human and British."

"You did see most of it, Rose."

"Doctor, I was chased through most of it by a murderin' alien, not the same thing for me though I guess it is for you. Now it's all blown up, which is okay because we saved the world, all I have to remember the special time you promised is these bloody table burns on my bum.”

That stopped the Doctor cold.

"BURNS? _That_ is what you were thinking about?"

_Not_ that he had admitted to Rose that he was ready to chuck it all for her, that for her he might have turned his back on hundreds of years of who he was, not to mention what could have happened to Earth while he'd been procrastinating? Just some friction burns Rose had gotten when they shagged on the table.

Did Rose care that he loved her? Was he nothing more to her than some dangerous adventure, an impressive bit of skin and steel and some fantastic technique between her boring stupid idiot pretty boys? Sure sure he'd planned to ignore it or deny he'd said it, but how could Rose not realize how much of himself he'd offered her?

"I made you a promise, Rose Tyler," he said levelly, "and I never go back on a promise." He dragged Rose back into the control room and programmed their destination. After a few seconds he dragged her down to the doors. "I never go back on a promise–" With a flourish he threw the doors open to an earlier and fully intact 10 Downing Street. "Unless the situation cries out for going back."

And as he'd promised in the limo, the Doctor took her in every room starting at the front door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~

 

The Doctor pulled Rose back into an alcove just as an earlier Rose Tyler and Harriet Jones rushed into the room they'd just left. He pulled a couple of stethoscopes out of his jacket pocket, donned one and put it to the wall, and handed the other to Rose. "Could do with some popcorn and a comfy chair," he grinned.

Rose smacked the lunatic.

They hung around a bit, listening through the wall. (Stayed quite a while, actually; the hound dog was having fun quoting their phone sex, following along in his husky baritone or a minxy falsetto as his long cool fingers acted it out on Rose's body. Rose wondered if he just really wanted her dripping for him, which of course she'd been almost continuously since she'd met him).

They hid in a nearby room when they heard Margaret Slitheen coming. When the earlier him showed, Rose put her Doctor away and zipped up his denims. "Doctor," she whispered, "don't pout. I think we're cutting this a bit close."

"Nah, I figure we can stay until the–"

"Place goes up with a bang? Or we do?" Rose's tongue teased through her smile as he fought to control a grin. "Oi Doctor, it's one ginormous explosion after another with you."

"You're welcome," he growled with that low deep voice, smoky intonation, and look in his eyes that was one of the real reasons Rose knew wearing knickers was just a waste of time.

Maybe their future friend had him pegged, maybe the Doctor was a prick. But he was Rose's prick. She was gonna have fun being his plus-one as long as she could, and she wouldn't let him become anyone less than who he was. Eventually he was going to say the words, he was. If he didn't go off and blow himself into a zillion pieces first. Rose kissed his cheek and sighed. "Kaboom."

 

~~

 

Rose still had to make good on her promise not to let the Doctor out of bed until they were both too sore to stay, but when they finally got the TARDIS into the vortex they were both too sore to start anything (though by mutual unspoken agreement they didn't admit it). Rose showered and changed. The Doctor was bent over the console deep in concentration when Rose returned, but he sensed her at the door, felt her staring at his inarguably fantastic ninth body. He knew she was getting a little flushed. She came up behind him and cupped his bum.

"'Capable of igniting and burning; easily aroused or excited," he said without turning around. "I looked up combustible in an Earth dictionary after you left." He turned and smiled at her. "Rose," he said softly, "did you ever stop to think that the places we end up blow up not because the situations are combustible, but because we are?"

"Never thought two people could base a relationship on an incendiary device and a leg over. But since I've been with you…"

"You haven't had any need for a vibrator," he grinned hugely. He pulled Rose to him and wrapped her leg over his hip. His hand slipped up under her skirt, fondled her bum, then began to tease.

"Except the ones you have us try out on each other so cleverly." She shifted, trying to impale herself on his lovely fingers, and grinned up at him. The Doctor stared down at her with endless unreadable eyes. He began to stroke her lightly. His cool fingers wandered, skilled and weightless, amongst her folds, around her clit, along her opening… luscious and patient. More patient than Rose; the Doctor barely touched her yet her stomach fluttered riotously in her throat and she knew she was dripping on his fingers.

He kissed the top of her head tenderly. She barely felt it, but it was always like that, more a touch of coolness and a warmth of knowing that suffused her body from the Doctor's lips to the tips of her fingers and toes. The last time he'd done it they'd been in a closet about to be hit by a missile and he might have been going to say it and they might have died. All of Rose's good sense promises to herself disappeared in an avalanche of emotions. "What you said earlier, what did you mean?"

"Said lots of things earlier, Rose Tyler. Can you be a bit more specific?"

"I could save the world but lose you. You said it when–"

"I know when I said it, Rose. You'd told me _Do it_ and wanted to know what I was waiting for. I could have drawn you a flow chart but Harriet was there, and your mum and boyfriend–"

"EX - boyfriend."

"–ex-boyfriend were listening on the line. I figured we had enough to worry about and enigmatic was the way to go. So I told ya succinctly what the little miniscule problem with _do it_ was." He stared at his lover, his expression giving away nothing. "Who says _Do it_ not knowing what they're agreeing to, just that something's gonna hit the fan?"

"What, ya wanted twenty questions Doctor? I figured you didn't have the time _or_ the patience."

The Doctor grunted.

"So it didn’t mean anything much, just a review of one possible strategy without Mum learnin' enough to will you dead across the phone line."

"Right. And _'Do it'_?"

"Basically the same. Didn't want to get too detailed on account of Mum."

The Doctor had an itchy feeling that Rose wasn't being as forthright with him as he wasn't being with her, but it was time to change the subject they weren't discussing. "On the other hand, that might have been another effective way to get rid of the alien threat– tell Jackie her baby's about to become ground zero, an' she'd've run down to Number 10 and ripped the Slitheen apart. They'd never have stood a chance. Could've saved a politically and historically important building and a lot of paperwork. Yup, Jackie Tyler for the mopping up."

"Doctor, do I have to remind you that the Slitheen were not the only alien threat my mum was ready to tear a strip off?"

"Ah."

"Not that I need to know, but you got any idea where we're headin'?"

The Doctor stared at Rose and did a fine job of keeping his hearts out of his eyes. Probably. "Rose Tyler, I don't know where we're heading, but–"

The TARDIS juddered and bounced. Rose grabbed a hold of the console. As the Doctor worried the controls he shook his head. "Could be the United States. Maybe Utah."

 

 

 

 

* * *


End file.
